UFC News & FeaturesDan Hardy, Herb Dean Clash Over Controversial Stoppage at UFC on ESPN 14
OUT OF NOWHERE @Massarandubamma dropped the hammer at #UFCFightIsland3 pic.twitter.com/ZO9lfuarOf
— ESPN MMA (@espnmma) July 25, 2020
A former fighter and one of the sport’s most respected officials have engaged in a very public dispute over the timing of the stoppage in Saturday’s lightweight showdown between Francisco Trinaldo and Jai Herbert.
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Former UFC welterweight title challenger Dan Hardy, who was commentating the fight from cageside, vocally called for the bout to be halted sooner. A post-fight confrontation between Hardy and Dean regarding the stoppage was captured on social media.
Hardy later released a statement defending his reaction via Instagram:
I love mixed martial arts. Sometimes it doesn’t love me back though, and that’s alright. Regardless, I’ll always do everything in my power to protect it, and those dedicating themselves to it.
Sometimes you may disagree with me, and that’s alright as well. I’m always going to speak my mind, and it will always be backed by what I feel in my heart.
If you understand what it takes to get in there, then you understand my passion and anger when I see a fighter left unprotected. It isn’t the first time it’s happened, and twice in a night is clear negligence, in my opinion.
The referee’s job is more important than any other person in that building. It is on their shoulders to protect fighters from getting seriously hurt when they are unable to protect themselves.
You may just see UFC fighters in there, but I see friends, teammates, sons, daughters, mothers and fathers, competing in the sport that they love.
When I make a mistake, I look stupid on live TV. When a referee makes a mistake, people are left vulnerable and can be seriously damaged. That can be life-changing, and we all have someone to go home to, that loves us and wants us back in one piece.
Thank you for all of the kind words and messages I’ve received. I am truly grateful. I’ll see you all around.
Dean, meanwhile, defended the stoppage in a video message. The longtime official claimed that only two people – the cageside physician and the fighter’s corner – have authority to tell him when to halt a fight.
“What I really want to get into right now is during the match someone yelled out, ‘Stop the fight,'” Dean said. “It’s really interesting because there’s only professionals there and there’s not one fan in the building. Everybody has a job there, everybody knows what their job is and they have specific duties. I have a job to referee the fight, one of my duties is to stop the fight when the fighter’s taking too much damage. There’s two people who are authorized to advise me during that, to maybe yell out those words, ‘Stop the fight.’
“There’s one, the physician. We have a ringside physician who knows more about the physical body than I do. He’s there to give me advice. If he can’t get my attention maybe he might yell, ‘Stop the fight.’ Then there’s the fighter’s corner. They train with them, they know about them, they know more things about him than I do,” he continued. “They may know something I don’t know, so that’s why they would give me some advice to stop the fight. Ultimately to stop the fight is my decision. I don’t know who it was who did it because I was looking at the fight but I had heard it, so I assumed it was either of the two people authorized to do it, the doctor or the corner.”
Dean says he was not aware that it was Hardy who was yelling until after the fight’s conclusion.
“After the match I followed up, I asked the physician he said, ‘No, that fight was fine. You were doing perfectly fine with everything you did in that match,'” Dean said. “I didn’t get a chance to ask his corner, but I asked the inspectors, who are in charge of his corner. They said, ‘No. The corner did not yell out to stop the match.’ That means it was someone else, someone else there to do another job. This is a very dangerous thing to do. If you put on your Superman shirt and decide that you’re the smartest person in the room, smarter than the physician, smarter than the corner who works with the guy and smarter than the referee, there’s a chance you could bring in information that could do the fighter a disservice.
“I’m looking at the match, I believe I’m getting information from the people qualified to do it. Under no circumstance would I, even as a referee, get up and yell to another referee to stop the match. If I were to do that I would know there would be a situation where I couldn’t live with myself otherwise. I know there could be consequences you would never see me in that position again, but I would sleep well knowing that I’d done that.”
Dean added that he believed Herbert was still doing enough to intelligently defend himself after Trinaldo’s knockdown.
“The bottom line now if I have to look at that match, not looking at it to know if I should’ve stopped it early, because it’s easy,” Dean said. “Anyone who believes it’s not is just following because someone with a microphone says it should’ve been stopped. But if you know anything about fighting, the fighter got hurt, fighters get rocked all the time, but we’re looking at his actions. He’s tracking his opponent, he knows where his opponent is. He’s putting both arms between him and his opponent, he’s lifting his legs and head off the mat. He’s doing everything I could ask for to stay in that fight. So, it wasn’t a bad stoppage.
“But that person who is yelling out, that’s almost the same thing as if you would grab a horn and ring the horn as if you’re calling the time. It could easily be mistaken for the people who are officially qualified to yell, ‘Stop the fight.’ It should never be done. Food for thought.”
UFC senior vice president David Shaw said during Saturday’s post-fight press conference that the promotion will review the situation to see if any further action needs to be taken.
“The important thing for us to do is to try and get a handle and try to get an understanding of what actually happened. Obviously, this is not something that you address with either one of the parties during the show,” Shaw said. “These guys have a job to do, and so we certainly don’t want to disrupt their efforts to do an excellent job, as we expect they always will. So we’ll go back, we’ll check it out, try to get a better understanding of what happened and really take it from there.”
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